14 March 2013

Jews of Bratislava

The Jewish history of the area now known as Bratislava dates back well over 700 years ago. Now the capital city of Slovakia, it was until 1918 in Hungary. Known in Hungary as Pozsony, it was the home of the Kings of Hungary.
The Jewish community of Bratislava is first acknowledged in 1291, when they were granted a charter by King Andrew III. The members of the community, comprised mostly of merchants, bankers and owners of vineyards became taxpayers and established a solid community. The earliest synagogue was built in the 1330's.
Life in Bratislava was not always peaceful for the Jews living there. In 1360, the Jews were expelled from Hungary, and some residents fled to Austria. They were allowed back in 1367 and were even allowed to return to their homes. However in 1371, laws were put in place that regulated financial transactions between Jews and Christians. In 1392, Christians were exempted for a year from having to pay taxes on money owed to Jews. Later, in the mid 1400's, on two different occasions, all debts owed to Jews were cancelled.

Over the next 300 or so years, the Jews suffered through multiple restrictions on the community. The restrictions included who they could trade with and where they could live. Also, on numerous occasions they were expelled from Hungary. Because of these actions the Jewish population was under 200 hundred by the early 1700's.
In the early 1700's, Jews in the various areas of Bratislava were given some protection and were even allowed to establish small communities. In the 1770's the Jews living in the area of Schlossberg were permitted to settle on land owned by the city and establish their own "Jewish Street". The Jews of Bratislava became very well established. They established the textile trade in Hungary and helped Bratislava become a center of learning for Jews, in fact, for Orthodox Jews it became a major place of importance for the entire world. By 1930, the Jewish population of Bratislava had grown to almost 15,000 which was well over 10% of the entire population.
Now, Marelynn Zipser has transcribed the records of the Jewish community of Bratislava, and made those available to the Knowles Collection. This incredible work is now part of the Jews of Europe database. The collection can be search at the FamilySearch Community Trees site. That link is provided at the top right of this blog. A very special thanks to Marelynn for all her hard work. She is truly blessing so many with her efforts.

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Why the Knowles Collection?

From an early age I have been trying to find as much information as I could about my gggrandfather, Morris DavidRosenbaum, a Polish Jew. In my search and through my work as a Reference Consultant in the British Research unit at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, I have compiled records of The Jewish people. This collection, linking Jewish families, is available free to all. Hopefully, people will come together to share the stories of their own families.

Size of the databases (28 Jan 2015)

Jews of British Isles 208,349Jews of Europe380,637Jews of North America489,400Jews of South America and Caribbean21,351Jews of Africa & Orient37,618Jews of South Pacific21,518

Total 1,158,873

Growth and Change

In the 7 years since the Knowles Collection was first published, the numbers have climbed from just over 7,500 to over 1,000,000as of April of 2014. So many of our ancestors left their native lands for new homes. Because of that movement the collection will now be in 6 different databases. All of them will be under the Knowles Collection umbrella. They are Jewsof The British Isles; Jews of the North America; Jews of Europe; Jews of South America and the Caribbean; and Jews of Africa and the Orient and the newest one, Jews of the Southern Pacific.. This is a great indication of how universal our families are, and of how much still needs to be done.